A blog about the Big Four of the English Premier League

Gone in 60 Minutes

First of all, I told you so. This was bound to happen, especially in the wake of the Arse-analing from last week. We’ve had this habit of mothering the bottom 4 clubs at home by significant margins, and there was enough reason to believe that we’d repeat that today. I mean who are we kidding, this is a club that is bottom of the table by a clean 6 points. Their new owner is called Balram Chainrai, a close relative of local Chennai dadas Chain Shekar and Sangli Karuppan. And how seriously can you take a club who had their site taken down cos they couldn’t afford the domain hosting fees! I mean, Bigfourza can afford its domain hosting fees (And a little tidbit there for our regulars 🙂 ) Of course, they are also the team which beat the Scouse by a clean 2 goals up at Fratton Park so there was always the chance that they would make a match of it. NOT.

Portsmouth had something going for the first half hour of the game, in all fairness to them. Vanden Borre capitalized on on a moment of somnolence by Evra to burst down the right and give VDS the moment in this match to earn his pay for the week. Few minutes later, and it was down the other flank with Belhadj on his favourite left foot. Cue moment for Johnny boy to earn his paycheque for the week, and indeed for the season. Johnny boy really has come of age over the past few weeks. He has looked shaky early on this season… that point of time when we had Carrick and Fletch as an integral part of our back four. But now, he has made a definite conscious effort to understand the game better, positioning-wise. Simple genius in the way he got back behind VDS to back-heel Belhadj’s shot to safety.

That’s more than enough of a wake-up call for three-time champions to shift into second gear against bottom feeders. This was the wing play that was supposed to be United’s formation at the beginning of the season, but Nani became as unpredictable as the English weather and Valencia learnt one more trick than tap-and-run and settled into the right. However, on the form he is in, he could’ve and did play anywhere on the pitch and ensure he got us an own goal. And he did. After Rooney (who else) had put us ahead after a quick-taken corner from the right.

We played the first half with 10 men, and we scored 2. Yes, Berba was not playing. If you had placed a tracker on him, you couldn’t placed him within a 10 meter radius at any point. Any central striker who doesn’t wander 10 meters from the penalty box better be good when the ball is at least in the box and 5 meters from goal. Not to happen, as Berba missed a sitter before the above happened to send United on its way. He made up for it in the second half, when we played with all 11 and scored 3. It was a very conscious ‘No, this is my goal. I shall score this goal. I used to be good at this. Everyone WAIT, I got this.’ moment as three players streamed around him in what has now become typical United breaks. He did show he’s still got it, getting United’s fourth after Carrick had a deflected shot fly in from the edge of the area.

Taking off Roon, Berba and Fletcher still wasn’t enough to convince Portsmouth that the game was over and they could all just sit back and relax. Or tell the referee that they really would like to take the bus back to their own stadium as soon as they could before someone locked them out of that too. Patrice delivered a cross from the left that Nani missed, and OwenDiouf Marc Wilson finished with a sweetly struck volley into his own top right corner. That makes it two own goals, one deflection, and two from our central strikers for the match. Game well done.

The KC stadium is turning out to be quite the trippy place for top clubs to go to. Mancunts and all their money couldn’t do jackshit up there now, could they? Just goes to show you. Whether you have money by the truckloads, or have absolutely nothing left even for domain hosting, if it doesn’t work out over the 90 minutes on the pitch, it doesn’t really matter.